The Martian Movie Review

For the 12 or so of you who remember the blog from my previous go around, you had to know that this was coming.  In fact, one person has been on me for a month asking me, “When do we get the movie reviews?”  Well the problem was, September is a terrible time for movies, but that’s when I started back up writing.  I assured him that soon enough, good movies (and by good movies, I mean movies that I would want to see.  I don’t mean poignant artsy movies.) would be coming out and the movie reviews would be back.  Here we are.

The Martian AKA, Gravity 2: Martian Boogaloo.  stars Jason Bourne in the lead role. I will answer my wife’s question here.  “So, he’s a martian?”  (My wife hates alien movies.)  No, he is not a martian, but an astronaut stranded on Mars.  (My reviews are spoiler free, but what I mean by that is I won’t say more about the plot than what is obvious in the trailer.  If him being stranded on Mars is a spoiler for you, I encourage you to read the text on the poster.)  We also have two sets of ensemble cast members.  His space crew that includes Ant-Man’s funny friend, that girl from the 1st season of House of Cards (who is in like everything now, including the ill-advised reboot of Fantastic 4), Bucky from Captain America,  and the red-head from The Help, no the other one, no the other one, the one who caught Bin Laden in Zero Dark Thirty.  The ground crew at mission control includes Harry from Dumb and Dumber, Troy from Community, the Target Lady (???), the guy from 12 Years a Slave and Boromir/Ned Stark.  This is quite a good ensemble cast.

Expectations: Moderate.  I didn’t know if it was going to be an exciting action movie, a slow descent into madness or what.  I was afraid that it was going to be too poignant, but at the same time, there were great people in the movie and I figured it would a good kind of intense.

Reality: Better than I thought it was going to be.  It was an appropriate amount of poignant.  I never felt it was preaching at me (That’s my job, not a movie’s job).  It was an interesting look into an individual’s will to survive, the politics of decision-making and being a part of a team.  In addition there were just some cool parts.  Good mix of regular person good movie and fancy person good movie.  A bit long at 2 hours and 20 minutes.  The elimination of one “OH NO!” scene would have made it just about right.

Appropriateness: A few F-Bombs (some said and some written and more implied) and some other scattered language. You also get to see the backside of Matt Damon’s body double.  There’s a scene on par with Tom Hanks knocking out his own tooth in Castaway and that’s a little bloody.

Rating System (Revised for 2015):

See it in the theater and will definitely own

See it in the theater and might own

See it in the theater and will likely Redbox it again

See it in the theater and be done

See it at the dollar theater

Redbox

Bored in 2 years and  watch it on Netflix

Avoid it.

I rate it a see it in the theater and Redbox. Heidi needs to see it.  So we will Redbox it at some point.  You should go see it.  It’s visually captivating and a great story with great acting.  There’s action, drama, humor, a little bit of everything.  It’s the kind of movie, and this is rare, that you could recommend to a lot of different people.  It’s not a date movie per se, but it would work well for a date, in that everyone will enjoy it for different reasons.